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Comment by LeoTinnitus | Hacker News Reader

I actually am one of those weirdos that has to use an equalizer for android because i can't stand how loud the lowest setting is. When you work in a relatively quiet office, you sometimes want to be pick up on what other people are saying without having to ask again.

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I miss being able to use alsamixer on my rooted android 4 phone. It was by far the best way to control every aspect of sound output on an android phone. It gave you total control over everything, including overriding android's built in limits on various outputs. You could make your external speakers go nice and loud and bring your headphones down really quiet while still being audible. Android's sound management is exceedingly abysmal and just seems to get worse with each new version.

I find the lowest settings on any phone I have tried too loud with any headphones or bluetooth device. I gave up trying. Even in a normal room its painfully loud. Per your username I do have tinnitus also and some minor hearing loss but not massive. No idea why this is so miserable.

I had a similar issue where I bought a pair of in-ear monitors with very low impedance and the lowest settings on my phone/laptop is still too loud. I solved it buying a small headphone amp: https://www.radsone.com/earstudio

It's worked out really well. It's much smaller than most headphone amps and has the added bonus (for me) of making my headphones wireless.

I currently use Music Volume EQ for android and it works. It's annoying sometimes cause I may need to restart every once in a while or reinstall it, but it allows me to turn the equalizer at the lowest level, turn it on, and then listen to that base "quiet" as the new lowest level.

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